


homesick for an imagined place

by GStK



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 06:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20903114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: oh, what wonder to be alive and seemy father’s footprints in his sister’s garden.he’s furiously scissoring the hyacinths,saying 'all the time' when the tele-researcher asks him'how often do you think your lifeis a mistake?'





	homesick for an imagined place

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Shadowbringers. Second-person PoV.  
Very self-indulgent.

wings to fly and lungs to breathe and eyes that will never see a soul, refragmented, restored to the one you have lost. none of your creations will compare to it.

city-deep abyss. seconds to hours as hours are to moons. the underworld is calling, if only you could reach through to it.

your fellows do not like much to interfere. they set their plans in motion and leave the chaos to unfold, as men are wont to make happen. you, however. you weave yourself through the stories. some tales need a hands-on approach, not simply fingers drifting across the shadows.

* * *

once, she has a gate of brown hair that keeps you from seeing her face. she is important in every eon when she exists. you catch her dying in the depths of the oasis, long before the empire is established, eorzea caught in its ceaseless cycle of primitive retribution.

the seekers of the sun are a poor choice for summoning primals. they are too diasporic. they can't even summon their goddess with all the crystals in the desert.

the point is you grab her by the back of her scalp, dragging her up. her blue, slitted eyes gaze back at you in a haze. she sees her nunh. you see the spear wound that is going to spell her death. the ground is bloody but ever-shifting.

"qhoz," she sighs.

"i expected better from you," you retaliate.

she dies with tears in her swimming eyes. you don't feel any better for the torture. you shut your eyes to the empty din of the weak aetheric sky.

* * *

once, you pluck the soul out of the flow. you cannot give it form when it is already solid. a hero, perished, returned to his mortal coil.

"how?" he asks, blue eyes ablaze. he returns to your embrace with stars in his eyes, taking the spear from the trodden ground, bracing your back against it.

"why not?" you answer. your name is li-ala and you are a product of the first, sowing the growing seeds of dissent that will build to the flood. he tried to stop you, once, but love blinds his eyes. you are his passion and his ascension and he will lead you to the redressing of the imbalance. it is not his time to die.

"you're incredible," he says against your perked mystal ears. he gives a relieved flutter of his own. the dead bodies around you dissolve, murky in their light. new fragments to be born again. hydaelyn's stream is not smooth, but filled with scattered crystals.

* * *

once, she is white, and she meets you on the battlefield. white magic against black; there will be no winner. one flood blends into another. your spells scatter bodies from the tip of the mountain. screams of magic and splintering of souls. creation magic would never cause such an anomaly, and for exactly this reason you must sow his chaos.

she thinks she has the edge on you. from beneath the brim of her hat, she begins her cast yalms away from you, behind. you could grab her by the throat and dismiss her back to the stream in an instant. you close your eyes. you open them, and look upon her, and she burns so dimly.

you wave aside her spell, the boulder exploding somewhere beyond your shoulder. she doesn't back away when you approach her in this lanky body. elezen, you are. lalafell is she. you must stoop to meet her eyes beneath her hat, but that is no matter. just once, you look for any signs of recognition.

"this is all your fault," she accuses on a gasp of malice. you touch your cane to her heart.

"my dear girl," you reply, "i am undoing every mistake you have or will ever think of making."

the ice plunges through her. she makes a hero's attempt at healing the wound, but it's too much for such a small body. she dies on the ground in front of you with her soul spilling out.

you bid the aether to dance around your fingers before you let it go back to the stream. they call it the mother crystal. even this they seek to take away from you.

you will see her again when men are even further from the gods.

* * *

once, his lips meet with another's. he is pining for something that will be robbed from him. the warrior of light, as they call him in this era, is a knight belonging to the ranks of ishgard, and he has the heaven's ward zephirin under his sway. this body of yours is one dragoon of many. you are inviting the blood of war and the heretics into his home. you are watching him slay friend and foe alike while his face grows grave.

he treats you like a passing fool and you permit it. the other ascians whisper in the ear of the archbishop and persuade him to temper his knights of the round. you have a child. your wife drinks the blood of dragons and he brings her down.

"is this the course you've decided on?" he questions you, not with your wife dead at your feet, no, but with a hair of blonde head at his. a sword that isn't yours is driven through the heart of the man he loved. his voice doesn't waver, but his hand does when he pulls his blade free.

"now, now," you say, and the voice of your vessel is so strangely bitter. hm. "war is at hand. i do what needs to be done as you scrounge around in the dark for purpose."

he is silent as he points his weapon at you. this fragment will not reunite ishgard into a whole. he will take your head and roll it into an unmarked grave.

but do you feel pleasure, the same you felt as when you looked at the sky and the underworld was full of stars? --

his lover is robbed from him and his life is ruined.

\-- perhaps. 'tis only an echo. nothing more.

* * *

once, a sleepy warmth wraps around you. not every host pays in blood; not every contract is signed on the edge of tears. this vessel has given himself up to you to protect that fragmented-rejoined soul, a prayer for the future placed in the hands of the darkness. ‘twas not a moment of weakness to accept. your bones are weary and yet you continue to build.

they have a family. their son -- your son -- is a scattered mess, eyes as big as the moon when he gazes upon you. he is young. his skin is midnight like yours and his hair is white, just like all that time ago. he would bathe his hands in blood for you. perhaps he will.

your daughter is determined with a lance and twirls it even when she is unsteady on her feet. her eyes are that blazing blue, the same as his. she will fight in some far-off army in the next coming calamity and die at the hands of her brother. she will try to slay you. perhaps she will succeed.

“still awake?” he murmurs groggily, his arms encapsulating you further. his bushy tail wraps around the tip of yours. he nuzzles one of your white ears, setting his head on your shoulder. it’s the middle of the afternoon and you are plunged in yellowed light, heavy shadows. “you’re the one who wanted a nap, ‘lea…” he breaks off with a yawn.

you look up at him, against him, feeling the pulse of creation and aether against your skin. he is brighter than he was before against the tapestry. your god will return from the sunder and you can see the path so clearly cut on the edge of a knife --

the man kisses your neck to bring you back. he smiles at you. this shard will never discover their warrior of light while your cloak veils him, you, your family. you will take this moment, and several more.

* * *

“ala,” says a rose-shattered voice.

“teyhi,” you return in your tulip-chipped own. this vessel has carved her name into the soul’s leg. the night is dismal and her scars are on full display.

she hops down from the steps to traipse over to you. her hips sway, her ornaments jingle, and you do not look up from your steepled hands. “what are you brooding about?” she asks, giggly and contrary with ale.

“how some can be so willful, yet so impetuous.” that’s right. igeyorhm has done her damndest and paid the price. now she goes nipping at lahabrea’s heels to the source. you are just glad to be without their company.

“if this is about that guy, then why don’t you go beat him up?” she suggests with a laugh. she presses herself onto your arm, the softness of her breasts contained only by the slim ribbons of her dancer’s costume. “i know you’re good with a knife.”

the world is a teacup spinning on the tip of a needle and she is laughing to you about boys. your vessel is so young, and yet you feel so old. the sigh you give wracks your entire body.

“if you wanted to stake your claim,” she says, “you have to defend it!”

you look up at her eyes. they are blue. you look up to the stars, and they are many.

“train your tongue,” you answer, “and i might very well someday take orders from you.”

“that’s not what you’re supposed to say…”

she is all the night caught at the dividing line of dawn.

* * *

once, she comes at you like a sound from across the sea: mysterious, cataclysmic. she is the dawn at the precipice of twilight.

you divest her of her weapon with a single stroke of yours. she falls from her horse. in the chaos of the naadam, her angry words are absorbed by the screams of others. the sound is deafening. all that remains is the action.

you step forward, your height dwarfing hers. you knock her to the ground. you take the tip of your spear and raise her chin with it. her scales ripple as she growls some tribal curse at you. what makes this brawl so different than the one at carteneau flats? the ferocity here could be harnessed for another calamity.

she is one tribe, you are another. she is a healer, not a warrior, but she believes her soul will be carried down the generations for all she has done. this you know from the many nights you spent together, spread out across a blanket in the sands, gazing up at the stars. your son looks up at that same sky when she carries him on her back.

such a pity. she grits her teeth when you take your spear away. she shouts something else, lost to the din. all of this is pointless. nonsense.

“what are you waiting for?” you finally hear her say. you weigh the answer on the tip of your weapon.

_ i am waiting for you to realise_. alas, you are qestir and your tribe demands silence, and this fragment will never know.

she is pierced through on the end of your spear. she falls down clutching her stomach, and this time, she doesn’t even try to keep the bleeding in. a dotharl does not fight the tide of battle, but she flows along with it. what a long and far journey you have made from the celebration of creation.

another dotharl comes for you. you rend him to pieces. you consider yourself in the moment, the glowing light of the chance to be king trying to blind you with its radiance. you look back at her, shielding your face with a hand. she is dead. you have this awful habit of leaving your children to come for your head, don’t you?

you watch her trail return to the raging stream. no one weeps.

next time, love. perhaps.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary adapted from works by Aria Aber.


End file.
